Curtis Konek, a Grade 12 student in a remote Arctic hamlet, finds recording the oral histories of Inuit elders has given his life dignity.

Giovanna Mingarelli, the Canadian chair of Global Dignity Day, says: “If students at a younger age could just deal with the concept of dignity or learn more about what it means, it could help to avoid many social pressing problems and issues as the children get older.”

In a time when people kill themselves during cockroach-eating contests, when they subject themselves to ridicule just to get on so-called reality TV and, on a more serious note, when they are tossed with their furnishings on the sidewalk after their homes have been repossessed by the banks, dignity is in short supply.

Just last week, Canada was horrified by the suicide of Amanda Todd, the beautiful 15-year-old who was cyberstalked and then beaten and bullied for it over a mistake she had made in Grade 7.

In a heart-stopping YouTube video shot by the B.C. teen shortly before she died, she holds up sheets of paper that relate how she was tracked down and exposed in a succession of schools to which she had been transferred in an effort to escape her stalker, her past — and to regain her dignity.

Holding your head up is not easy when everybody seems to be trying to bring you down.

But perhaps Global Dignity Day, which will be marked Wednesday in schools around the world, including 41 in Canada, may help raise the consciousness of some of the 350,000 students who will participate in the day’s events. It will do that through learning tools and other resources available on its websites.

The focus this year is on bullying.

“The meaning of dignity may vary across the vast Canadian landscape, but a young person bullied in downtown Toronto has just as much in common with a teenager in the Far North when it comes to being harassed, assaulted or abused,” notes Giovanna Mingarelli, Canada’s chair for Global Dignity Day 2012.

“Many of our social problems are caused by the lack of feeling a sense of dignity,” she says on the phone from her office in Ottawa. “If students at a younger age could just deal with the concept of dignity or learn more about what it means, it could help to avoid many social pressing problems and issues as the children get older.”

Established in 2005 by, among others, Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, Global Dignity Day aims to realize the universal right of every human being to lead a dignified life.

For a girl in a culture where women are second-class citizens, that could mean the opportunity to go to school. For a boy growing up surrounded by poverty and crime, it could mean gaining the ability to live up to his potential as a worthwhile member of society.

For Curtis Konek, a Grade 12 student in Arviat, Nunavut, dignity came through participation in his hamlet’s Nanisiniq Arviat History Project, which collects the oral histories of the elders. He also gained it with his service with the Junior Canadian Rangers in which, as a master corporal, he trains some 200 other youths.

One of this year’s young role models, he’s convinced that dignity — whether gaining it for oneself or helping to instil it in others — can make all the difference in the lives of youths in the North.

“For me, dignity means showing kindness and doing what you do well, so that it puts you in a place where you want to be,” he explains on the phone from his home on the western shore of Hudson’s Bay.

“There aren’t a lot of things that youth can do in Nunavut. There aren’t a lot of jobs,” he continues. “I joined the history project because I wanted to do something instead of staying home. When I started, I was a shy person, but this changed my life because I found myself being an important part of this community.

“Nunavut youth have a lot of potential but at some point they just stop trying because there’s nothing really they can do here. This means a lot to me because it helps a lot to show youth across Canada, especially in Nunavut, that doing what they like will bring them life and courage.”

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